Industry News

WOBURN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 11, 2006--Aegis Semiconductor, a leader in cost-effective optical channel monitors for fiber-optic communication networks, today announced that it has been granted two patents by the U.S. Patent Office entitled "Tunable Optical Instruments" (US Patent No. 7,002,697) and "Package for Optical Components" (US Patent No. 6,985,281). These patents cover the design of thermo-optically tunable thin-film interference filters and a fiber-optic enclosure for these filters based on the low-cost transistor outline (TO) assembly package.

Thermo-optically tunable thin-film filters form the basis of Aegis' Active Thin Films(TM) technology platform, which is ideally suited to serve today's rapidly growing market for low-cost DWDM channel monitoring. Optical monitoring is ubiquitous in optical communication networks; however, it is primarily limited to detecting the composite optical signal with a simple photodetector. By adding Active Thin Films technology within the photodetector enclosure, Aegis' solutions enable full spectrum analysis of DWDM signals within the same compact package.

"We are proud to receive these two patents, which reflect our core competency and reaffirm our mission to enable intelligence and flexibility in DWDM optical networks through the use of cost-effective tunable thin-film technology," said Don Bossi, President and CEO, Aegis Semiconductor. "Since its inception five years ago, the Active Thin Films platform has evolved to reach maturity, as evidenced by on-going large-scale deployments in communications service-provider networks."

Key advantages of the Active Thin Films platform include:

-- Volume fabrication by the thousands per wafer, dramatically reducing the cost per device compared to other existing technologies.